A Managed Document Center – Part IV

This is the fourth and last of a series of post about creating a Managed Document Center in SharePoint Online. The purpose is to create a document center that it is able to route and rename uploaded documents to their respective folder based on metadata associated with it. To see a full description of the resultant product, click here.

As mentioned on the previous posts, I have divided the job in the following steps:

1. Create the necessary Term Sets in the Term Store. 
2. Create a new site using the Document Center template. 
3. Enable and set up the Content Organizer. 
4. Create a site Content Type using Document as Parent Content Type. 
5. Edit the default Documents library with the columns and views needed. 
6. Create a workflow to rename the documents. 
7. Save the Documents library as template and create a new document library for each facility. 
8. Create Content Organizing rules to route the documents to his final location. 
9. Redirect the default “Upload a Document” button to the Drop Off Library. 

To see step 1 click here. To see steps 2 to 5, click here. To see step 6, click here.

7. Save the Documents library as template and create a new document library for each facility.

Go to the Documents library and click on the Library Settings icon in the ribbon. Then under Permissions and Management click on Save document library as template. Type a name for the file and a template name, in this case I will named it Managed Document Center. A description is optional, but it is a good idea to provide one, so it will show up in the right part when you create a new library. Leave the Include content check box unchecked.

Once you click OK, SharePoint will show you the following screen:

Click OK to continue. Then let’s start creating the document libraries for our different facilities.

On the navigation pane at the left of the screen, click on All Site Content. Then, click on the Create button at the top.

Within the new window, filter by library type in the left side, then choose the newly created template Managed Document Center. Note that the description will be displayed in the right side. Type the name of our first facility and click on Create.

Repeat this last process to create a document library for all the facilities. At this point you can hide the Documents library from the navigation pane, by going to its settings page, clicking in Title, description and navigation and selecting No on the Display this document library at the Quick Launch? question.

8. Create Content Organizing rules to route the documents to his final location.

We have activated the Content Organizer in step 3. Now, we are going to define rules to route documents to their respective libraries based on the entered metadata.

Go to the site settings and under Site Administration, click on Content Organizer Rules. Then, click on Add new item.

In the Content Organizer Rules: New Rule window, type a name for the first rule, in our case, I will use the name of the first facility. Leave the rule status and priority with their default values. Under Content Type Group select Custom Content Types and select Managed Document for the content type.  In the Conditions section, select the property Facility, operator is equal to and choose the name of the first facility for the value. Finally, select the facility’s document library as the Target Location.

Repeat this process to create rules for all the facilities.

You can test the rules by going to the Drop Off Library and uploading a document there. After the document has been uploaded, you’ll be asked to fill out the metadata we configured and the document will be routed based on the facility field:

9. Redirect the default “Upload a Document” button to the Drop Off Library.

When we created the site using the Document Center template, the initial page includes a welcome message with a button to upload a document.

This button saves the document in the Documents library, which is currently hidden in our managed document center.  In this step, we are going to change the target of that button to save the documents in the Drop Off Library, so the rules of the content organizer can be applied.

To do this, click on the Edit Page icon that is in the Page tab in the ribbon.

Note that the button is part of a Content Web Part. Click on it and click on the HTML button in the ribbon and then select Edit HTML Source.

On the HTML Source windows replace the following code:

<div class="ms-uploadbtnlink"><button onclick="javascript:OpenNewFormUrl(&#39;Documents/Forms/upload.aspx&#39;);return false;" type="submit"><nobr><img alt="Upload a Document" src="/_layouts/Images/uploaddoc.png"/>&#160;<span>Upload a Document</span></nobr></button> </div>

With this one:

<div class="ms-uploadbtnlink"><button onclick="javascript:OpenNewFormUrl(&#39;DropOffLibrary/Forms/upload.aspx&#39;);return false;" type="submit"><nobr><img alt="Upload a Document" src="/_layouts/Images/uploaddoc.png"/>&#160;<span>Upload a Document</span></nobr></button> </div>

Note that I just changed the word Documents by DropOffLibrary.

Now, users can upload documents directly from the hope page of our Managed Document Center.

Summarizing

In this series of post we have configured an automated solution that allows users to upload document from a centralized location. The document will be routed and renamed based on the metadata attached to them.

I recommend to use the Metadata navigation settings on the document libraries to have an easy way for users to filter and located the content documents. I didn’t included that feature on the template, because these option are not saved as part of the template.

Hope your enjoyed this series of posts!